Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Margaret Atwood Presentation at 2015 Texas Book Festival

Official Texas Book Festival Photo - Author Margaret Atwood

It was such a beautiful morning in Austin, showing all the
signs of an approaching autumn season, that I really hated to head indoors
immediately for my first session of the 2015 Texas Book Festival.But my reluctance disappeared when I
remembered that I was there an hour early for one reason: to attend Margaret
Atwood’s presentation on her latest novel, The
Heart Goes Last.At this point, I’m
going to have to admit an embarrassing thing about my reading relationship with
Atwood; I have never read her.As in
Never Ever.And how that happened, I
can’t explain.After all, I have several
of her books around the house (and now I own a signed copy of The Heart Goes Last).Heck, I’ve had a first edition copy of Cat’s Eye on my shelves since February
1989 when it was first published.I know
that she’s a major writer of our times, etc., but somehow or another I’ve never
read her.Weird, I know.

As a reflection of Atwood’s literary prestige and
popularity, her presentation was one of the few given inside the chambers of
either the Texas Senate or the Texas House of Representatives.(The vast majority of the presentations are
made in rooms located in the basement area of the building or outside under the
cover of large tents.)The line was long
and moved slowly into the lower level of the House meeting area, and I was
convinced that I would be moved to the upstairs gallery despite having been lined
up for a bit over an hour, but I got lucky and was one of the last dozen or so
to be able to squeeze in downstairs.So
I was off to a good start.

Margaret Atwood is everything I heard she was: funny,
personable, bright, energetic, opinionated, adventuresome, and well-versed on
the changes in bookselling.Kelly Luce,
the session moderator, began the session with a series of interesting questions
to Atwood but made sure to save some time at the end for what turned out to be
several really good questions from the audience.First up, of course, was a question about the
new book.Atwood mentioned that The Heart Goes Last, which is 306-page
novel, actually began as a series of short stories for Playboy magazine (she laughed about the magazine’s recent
announcement that it would no longer focus on nude pictures, meaning that
people really will be buying it for the “articles” now) but that her publisher
finally said to her “why not make this into a real book.”From there, the author went on to discus the
serialization techniques of Charles Dickens, mentioning as a side note that she
had once been allowed to sign her name with the very quill pen Dickens used to
write his books, and pointed out that some of Dickens’s books were changed to
suit the feedback he got from his weekly readers (especially regarding his
extra attention - as the book evolved - to those characters which were proving
to be the most popular).

It was while discussing her own writing techniques and the
structure of her books that Atwood most often showed her rather
self-deprecating sense of humor. For
instance, when discussing how a writer “suffers” for her art, she said that she
“had a little bit too much fun because I know you should suffer. And I did.
But not too much…you don’t want to suffer too much at my age.”

Here are a few other interesting tidbits that I managed to
jot down during the presentation:

·Atwood is not an “outliner” of novels and
stories.As she put it, she prefers to
see them “grow up.”She went on to
remark that teachers of her work can see the structure because they have the
whole book in front of them to teach from, while she never had that advantage
during the writing process.

·She is a fan of “fan fiction” and gave a brief
history of fan fiction, including the fact that it’s been around forever,
mentioning that Don Quixote was
covered by dozens of “fan writers” hoping to cash in on the book’s characters –
and that some of Shakespeare’s writing could be characterized as fan fiction.

·Atwood mentioned two interesting projects of
which she is a part.The first involves
her re-writing of Shakespeare’s The
Tempest and the second is one in which she has written one, of what will
eventually be 100 novels or stories, that will be sealed up for 100 years
before they are “opened” and made available to the public.The work is sealed away in Oslo, Norway.

·The author took note (as so many authors have
before her) of the setting and mentioned that she heard “laws are made
here.”She went on (again, as usual) to
speak of the Texas laws that she wishes she could change from her seat in the
chamber: penal laws, women’s right issues, etc.No surprises here, and I found myself starting to tune her out, so I was
happy when she moved on to something else.

·Atwood closed the session by addressing public
libraries and how important they are to society.Interestingly enough, the library issue was
brought up by a questioner in the audience who mentioned the many millions of
dollars Austin is spending to build a new library while, at the same time, the
current library sits largely empty and unused.She considers access to books in libraries to be a “cornerstone of
democracy” and said that the coke-addled mayor of Toronto was finally pushed
out of office on that issue alone.Apparently, he wanted to cut library funding and the voters were having
none of it.

I enjoyed the session most, I think, because of the access
that Atwood allows to her feelings and personality.She is open, sometimes blunt, and pretty much
always interesting.And this time
around, I’m certain that I’ll be reading a few Margaret Atwood novels…starting
with The Heart Goes Last.Post #2,593

8 comments:

Glad to hear she gave such a great presentation. I love her and her work. I read the parts of the book that have been serialized and didn't care for them all that much which was really disappointing. It doesn't seem like this one will be anywhere near her best book so if you don't like much like it in the end, don't hold it against her and try something else!

Thanks for the warning. I've heard a lot of specifics about several of her books and it seems there's often that little "something" that makes me think I can spend my reading time elsewhere. I'll start this one in a few days to see what happens. I've got several older ones around, too. Any suggestions?

She seems to cover several genres and that throws me off a bit when I'm approaching an author whose work I've never read. But I really do need to close that gap in my reading of contemporary authors because I know that she's considered to be an important author of our times. I'm going to do it this time... :-)

Hi Sam,I'm returning the visit. Nice to meet you.Great post, I love it when bloggers write about author events they attended. Looks like you had fun. I've only read one of Margaret Atwood's books, The Blind Assassin, but that was long ago and I can't remember liking it. I'll have to read more of her work.I hear The Handmaid's Tale is very good. Looking forward to reading how you liked her latest novel.

Hi Della. Thanks for stopping by. I'm going to be writing up my Texas Book Festival experiences over the next several days - I hope. It was great fun, as usual. Again...I enjoyed reading Stefanie's take on your questions. Well done.

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